FIG. 1 shows, in pictorial form, a typical call center arrangement which is used to handle volumes of in-bound calls. As shown in FIG. 1, the call center typically comprises a switch, for example, a switch like switch 100 which is configured as an Automatic Call Distributor (ACD). As is well known to those of ordinary skill in the art, the ACD function may reside at a public telephone company central office or at call center premises where it may be co-located with agents, such as agent.sub.1 -agent.sub.n, that interface therewith.
In practice, certain call centers handle in-bound call activity which is unevenly distributed in time. In general, it is not economical or practical to staff such a call center with a number of agents which is sufficient to respond to each in-bound call that arrives during periods of peak demand. Such uneven in-bound call activity is typically found in call centers which are used to support telemarketing or fund raising activity where, for example, national network television advertising is used to stimulate in-bound calls. In such an environment, advertising typically stimulates creates a large surge in volume of in-bound calls immediately after an advertisement has run and such in-bound call activity typically diminishes substantially as time passes.
In practice, in-bound calls that are directed to the call center after the last available agent has accepted an in-bound call are typically given a busy signal, this occurrence being referred to as call overflow. As a result, when call overflow occurs, callers are denied access to the call center and, thereby, to the services or products he or she was calling to obtain. In addition, and perhaps most important from the point of view of the entity which supports the call center operation, the entity is denied the opportunity to obtain revenue from the caller by providing its services or by selling its products.
One method used in the art for decreasing the above-described lost revenue which results from call overflow is to put in-bound calls into a queue to wait for an agent to become available to handle the call. This approach suffers from several disadvantages. One disadvantage is that, if the in-bound call spends a long time in the queue, caller will often become impatient and hang up the telephone, resulting in lost opportunities to provide services or to sell products. Another disadvantage is that, if the call center utilizes "800" service to receive in-bound calls, the entity supporting the call center will pay for in-bound calls which are waiting in the queue, even though the callers are being provided no service.
In light of the above, there is a need for method and apparatus for recovering in-bound calls to, for example, a call center, which in-bound calls were directed to overflow and which in-bound calls were lost before the call center had an opportunity to provide service. In addition, there is a need for such a method and apparatus which can recover such in-bound calls at predetermined times such as, for example, at times when demand is low enough that call center agents are available to handle in-bound calls.